Asia now returns to Ocula online viewing rooms

This year’s edition of the Paris Art Fair, which tackles the theme of “living on a damaged planet”, will feature galleries from Iran for the first time.

The seventh edition of ASIA NOW, Asian Arts Fair in Paris will take place in person from October 21 to 24 at 9 avenue Hoche. For the second year in a row, works will also be exhibited in the Ocula’s Online viewing rooms.

The ASIA NOW online catalog will be available to VIPs from 6 a.m. KST on October 21 and to the public from 6 a.m. KST on October 22. Participating galleries will be able to exhibit their works on the platform until November 7.

ASIA NOW online viewing rooms pre-registration is available here.

ASIA NOW described the partnership with Ocula “as an opportunity to highlight the rich diversity of the artwork and messages of our exhibitors, and enable them to reach a wider audience of new and established collectors across the world. world “.

The art of living on a damaged planet

This year’s ASIA NOW will explore the theme of ‘the art of living on a damaged planet’, embracing new global movements that seek to change the unsustainable trajectories we were on before the pandemic.

The theme was partly inspired by the American anthropologist Anna Tsing, who is one of the editors of the 2017 anthology. Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene.

“We didn’t want to resign ourselves to a situation that may seem hostile, but embrace and support what is really going on,” said the director and co-founder of ASIA NOW. Alexandra Fain.

As part of this exploration, the fair will include exhibitions by Kathy Alliou des Beaux-Arts and independent curator Nicolas Bourriaud, who organized Istanbul Biennale 2019 and the 2014 Taipei Biennale, among many other exhibitions.

Alliou’s exhibition Make worlds exist uses the Matsutaké mushroom – which has almost disappeared from Japanese forests but is still found abroad – as a metaphor for the upheaval of human populations. It will present new commissions from nine artists from Asia and the Asian diaspora in France, including the Xie Lei, Hong Kong Trevor Yeung, Mongolia Odonchimeg Davaadorj, the South Korean Seulgi Lee and the Franco-Vietnamese artist Van Tran game, which was nominated for the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2018.

Bourriaud will organize an exhibition of eight Asian artists including Chinese Guan Xiao, Hong Kong Ko Sin Tung, and Japan Natsuko Uchino under the title of To avoid, a Chinese word whose meanings include “flow”. Bourriaud contrasts the Taoist philosophy which emphasizes harmony with nature to the more utilitarian attitude of the West, which allows the dissection of atoms and the evisceration of the Earth.

ASIA NOW presents the art of Iran

For the first time, Asia Now has extended its scope to Western Asia. Among the 40 participating galleries, including leading global galleries such as Perrotin and Yavuz, seven are based in Tehran. Tatiana Gecmen Waldeck and Anahita Vessier, both members of the ASIA NOW advisory board, surveyed the vibrant contemporary Iranian art scene to select galleries to invite to ASIA NOW.

Odile Burluraux, curator at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris will also present works by 13 Iranian videographers at the fair as part of its project, Burning wings.

Other sections of ASIA NOW’s programming include a series of meetings and other interactions called thanks for nothing and two exhibitions at National Museum of Asian Arts Guimet. These exhibitions, which will open from October 21, feature works by artists born in Vietnam. Van-Tran game and Dodinh Huong. -[O]